16

Self-Development, Managerial Success and

Effectiveness: Some Empirical Evidence
J. G. BURGOYNE

Introduction
The subject of the theoretical analysis and empirical investigation reported
in this paper is the self-development of managers and its predictable and
observable effects on performance, success and effectiveness. The concept of
self-development implies the possibility of an ability on the part of the manager
to apply his existing managerial and other skills to the problem of his own
development, and to take the initiative in equipping himself with the competences
appropriate to his current and future activities. In as much as the manager can
become better at self-development, this concept also raises the possibility of
second order learning, learning to learn, which is one of the meanings attached
to the term &dquo;meta goals&dquo; (Boydell, 1976) or deuteroleaming (Bateson, 1973).
The concept and possibility of self-development is of both theoretical and
practical interest at the present time. At the theoretical level both the pure and
applied social sciences are coming to the conclusion that approaches to
understanding human behaviour based on simple notions of man, for example
as a habit system, cannot work, and that more complex basic assumptions about
the nature of man will have to be accepted. One suggestion (Harre and
Secord, 1972) is that humans could be construed as rule following &dquo;agents&dquo;
rather than passive, reactive &dquo;patients&dquo;. The concept of &dquo;agent&dquo; implies the
capacity to initiate and self-control, while the concept of patient implies
external control.
In the applied social sciences it has been suggested that approaches and
prescriptions based on &dquo;patient&dquo; type assumptions about people have not
functioned in the spirit of &dquo;value free science&dquo; as their proponents would claim,
but as conscious or unconscious collusions with the value systems of the
dominant coalitions which have been tended to be the clients of such work
(Heather, 1976). In as much as prescriptions based on &dquo;patient&dquo; assumptions
are self-fulfilling, that is they influence those on which they are imposed to
behave in a patient-like way, this criticism is likely to be valid. In the context of
management development, it has been suggested that a patient orientation,
leading to the development of managers as resources, rather than an agent
orientation treating managers as resourceful, may have resulted in relative
weaknesses in development management (establishing new activities) as
opposed to operations management (keeping established activities going)
(Morris and Burgoyne, 1973).
In practical terms the concept of managerial self-development is attractive
for a number of reasons. Firstly it offers an alternative to the elaborate systems
sometimes regarded as necessary to diagnose specific training needs of all
managers individually on a continuous basis, and then to meet them with
individually tailored programmes. Self-developing managers would presumably

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look after their own needs, possibly more effectively than an elaborate formal
system could ever hope to do in practice. Secondly, an organisational manage-
ment development policy based on the self-development concept could be
economical in terms of resources, particularly if &dquo;deuterolearning&dquo; (learning
to learn) can be relatively easily brought about. Thirdly, the self-development
concept offers solution to the dilemmas of obsolescence and an unknown
a
future, or how to do
something to ensure that managers have the competences
appropriate to the future rather than the past, when the future is not known and
cannot be guessed with any certainty. The &dquo;self-developing manager&dquo; could be
expected to develop and adapt his competences in ’real time’ to meet the
situations that confront him.
The self-development concept may also have another form of attraction in
practice as a convenient rhetoric in difficulty economic times to justify a
-

reduction in investment in human development, and to rationalise the reneging

on moral obligations and psychological contracts in the context of staff
redundancy programmes. In the latter case, the &dquo;self-development&dquo; concept
may be central to an expedient organisational switch from a psychological
contract in which the individual accepts the organisation’s right to allocate him
to jobs at its discretion, and train him appropriately, in return for job security,
to one in which the individual is held to be responsible to himself for ensuring
that he maintains himself with marketable skills, which the organisation may
’hire’ for only as long as they are useful.
Because there are other possible reasons for the attraction of the self-develop-
ment concept it is additionally important to find out whether in fact self-
development managers are more effective or successful, and if so to understand
the process which makes this so. As Cantor (1958) points out, since managers
have a strong influence over the learning of themselves and their subordinates
it may be as important that they have an understanding of the learning processes
involved, as it is important that they have an understanding of marketing,
accounting, economics, organisation theory and other bodies of knowledge
relevant to the performance of managerial tasks. However understanding of the
learning process is possibly the weakest of all these areas, and is rarely included
as a topic in management development programmes.

The Problem
There are therefore two main questions about self-development:
1. Is there any empirical support for the theoretically plausible proposition
that self-developing managers should be more effective and successful?
2. To the extent to which there is, what are the processes within the person
through which self-development takes place, and how can these be learnt
or taught?
An Approach
The approach taken in this study has been to speculate about some of the
processes likely to be involved in managerial self-development, and hence the
likely observable characteristics of &dquo;self-developing managers&dquo;, and to test

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empirically whether managers who have these characteristics are in fact more
successful effective. If such a relationship does exist, this will give some
or
support to the proposition that self-developing managers are more successful or
effective, and some indication that the processes involved are the ones
hypothesised here.
Processes Associated with Self-Development
Perhaps the most straightforward way of thinking about the processes likely
to be involved in self-development is to consider those things that teachers are
presumed to do for students as &dquo;patients&dquo;, and hypothesise that the self-
developing &dquo;agent&dquo; might do these for himself. This approach has been
explored by Thomas (1976) and Burgoyne (1973), and used as the basis of a
measure of teacher and learner attitudes to learner independence (Boydell,
1975). Some of the main processes might be the setting of learning goals, choos-
ing between alternative learning events or opportunities to achieve these goals,
and evaluating the effectiveness of the outcome of learning experiences. Initial
investigations have been carried out into the choice process (Burgoyne, 1973)
and evaluation process (Burgoyne, 1975), which suggest that managers are
capable of, and to varying degrees do, use them in a self-development process.
Another approach to understanding the processes of self-development has been
to look for reasons for its non-occurrence. Lawler (op. cit.) suggests that the
ability to suspend judgement is critical. Argyris (1976) has suggested that many
people get &dquo;locked into&dquo; a non-learning stage in which their &dquo;espoused theory&dquo;
(what they consciously believe and articulate) becomes detached from their
&dquo;theory in use&dquo; (the beliefs implicit in their actions) in such a way that they
remain unaware of this detachment, and in circumstances where it is not likely
to be brought to their attention (such as other people operating &dquo;theories in
use&dquo; they say it is impolite to tell people about the disfunctional consequences
of their behaviour). Another possible block, which is the focus of this study, is
in the area of setting of personal learning goals. The idea of a person setting
learning goals implies that the person in some way &dquo;knows what he does not
know&dquo;. This is not a paradox since it is possible to know of an area of
knowledge or expertise without having that knowledge or expertise. It is how-
ever equally possible for a person not to know what he does not know, in which
case it seems likely that this would constitute a block to self-development. It
follows from this that one possible characteristic of the self-developing manager
is a rich cognitive map of the possible skills, qualities and competences which could
be useful to him in performing a managerial function. The hypothesis to be tested
in this study is that managers with a rich cognitive map of this kind will be more
effective and/or successful. If this relationship is found it will be some weak
evidence for the belief that being self-developing makes managers more effective,
and that being able to conceive of a varied set of managerial skills and qualities
is part of the self-development process.

A Test of the Hypothesis

The hypothesis was tested by correlating a measure the complexity of the
cognitive maps of managerial skills and qualities, with various common sense

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 19
indications of their success and effectiveness, in a sample of managers. The
sample of managers was taken as a &dquo;vertical&dquo; slice from one organisation, to
ease the problems of comparability of effectiveness/success criteria. The measure
of complexity of the individual manager’s cognitive maps of managerial skills
and qualities was itself complicated. It was achieved by taking each manager’s
combined answers to two interview questions: one about the skills and
qualities which he perceived as contributing to his existing managerial
capability and another about those skills and qualities which he lacked, but
which could also contribute to his capability. The combined answers therefore
covered the spectrum of managerial skills and qualities which each manager
could conceive of. To get a measure of cognitive complexity these combined
answers were content analysed for each manager to see how many of ten areas
set out in a taxonomy of managerial qualities and skills previously established
(Burgoyne and Stuart, 1976) were covered. This therefore gave an index of
cognitive complexity of cognitive map of managerial skills and qualities with
a possible range of 0-10.
The criteria for success/effectiveness were:
1. Level of seniority -
as measured by salary grade.
2. Age-grade lead. The -
average age for the person’s salary grade, minus his
own age.
3. Self rating of effectiveness in the job.
There were 28 managers in the sample used for this study.
Results
The correlation between complexity of cognitive map of managerial skills and
the three success/effectiveness criteria were:

Conclusions
These results give general support to the hypothesis that managers with
richer cognitive maps of managerial skills and qualities are more effective and
successful.
This is weak support for the conclusion that a rich cognitive map of managerial
skills and qualities is part of a self-development process which causes managerial
effectiveness and success. The support is ’weak’ because there are other plausible
explanations of the data, such as success causing the richer cognitive map, or
some third variable like &dquo;articulateness&dquo; causing both.
From the theoretical point of view, the next step is to try out a &dquo;stronger&dquo;
test of the theory, by a &dquo;predictive&dquo; study involving the following up of a group
of managers to see if those who have, or can be helped to acquire, more complex
cognitive maps of managerial skills do better against criteria of success and
effectiveness in their subsequent careers.

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From a practical point of view an implication of the theory is that a key way
to help managers to develop might be to help them enrich their understanding
of the variety of managerial skills and qualities.
’

Both practical and theoretical interests could therefore be served by carrying

out an experimental programme of this nature and following up its effect to
test further the theory on which it is based.

References
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BURGOYNE, J. G., 1973. A new approach to evaluating management development programmes:
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BURGOYNE, J. G., 1975. The Judgement process in management students’ evaluation of their
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